Graeler: Stunned out West, Tigers search for answers

Sunday

Au contraire: The final three quarters of the Tigers’ 37-31 season-opening loss at Wyoming on Saturday night couldn’t have gone much worse.

After scoring 14 points in the first quarter before Wyoming even mustered that many yards, MU inexplicably surrendered 34 points to the Cowboys over the next two periods to give itself a mountain to climb.

“Momentum started out really good on our front, and then we lost it all,” somber Missouri head coach Barry Odom said after the humbling defeat.

The nightmare almost seemed like it would be just that — an unwelcome dream — when Missouri launched a comeback bid in the fourth quarter.

Maybe the unfathomable wouldn’t prove to be real after all.

In front of just over 26,000 at War Memorial Stadium, Missouri quarterback Kelly Bryant connected with fellow graduate transfer Jonathan Nance for a 53-yard strike to pull the Tigers within six with 6:19 remaining. This after the Tigers trailed by 17 entering the fourth.

The Missouri defense forced a Wyoming punt to get the ball back with 2:19 on the clock, and Bryant completed passes to four different receivers on what could have been the signature drive of the night for MU.

But the signal caller was sacked by Wyoming’s Josiah Hall on second down and threw incomplete on the final two plays of the game, his final gasp a heave to the end zone intended for a quadruple-teamed Johnathon Johnson.

“We were just trying to win the game,” said Bryant, who completed 31 of 48 passes for 423 yards, two touchdowns and an interception in his MU debut. “I was just trying to throw one up and let our guys make a play. It didn’t happen how we wanted it to happen, but it’s a lesson for us to learn from.”

Wyoming secured its first win over a Power Five opponent in Craig Bohl's tenure as head coach, triggering a $100K bonus in his contract.

Missouri’s terrible, no-good day was part of a larger trend, as Mountain West Conference teams have now beaten foes from the Big Ten, ACC and Pac-12 all in the first week of the college football season.

“This has been a long time coming,” Bohl told CBS Sports Network after the upset. His team was an 18-point underdog. “There’s going to be more. I think it speaks really well of our conference and especially well of our program.”

Bound for home in Columbia, the Tigers’ emotions ranged from numb to angry to stunned.

“Am I allowed to use expletives?” Tigers senior linebacker and co-captain Cale Garrett said when asked to describe his emotions.

Aside from the Missouri defense being gashed for touchdowns of 61 and 75 yards as part of Wyoming's 27-point second quarter, the Tigers' three turnovers are what may keep Odom and his staff up at night for many days to come.

Missouri was leading 14-3 until the first turnover bit hard. Bryant fumbled a designed draw play, and Wyoming’s C.J. Coldon scooped the ball and galloped to the end zone for the Cowboys’ first touchdown.

The Tigers’ second fumble of the second quarter was even more destructive. On third-and-goal from the Wyoming 1 with 15 seconds until halftime, the Cowboys forced Larry Rountree to cough up the ball and would have returned it the length of the field had Bryant not made a horse-collar tackle. An untimed, 23-yard field goal gave Wyoming a 10-point lead at the intermission that put Missouri in a world of trouble.

As if untimely giveaways hadn’t hampered Missouri enough already, Bryant was picked off in the end zone on an under-thrown, cross-field throw while looking to claw the Tigers back into the contest early in the third.

By stark contrast, Wyoming played a turnover-free game.

“Credit to Wyoming, Craig (Bohl) did a great job and had a wonderful game plan,” Odom said. “They capitalized on turnovers. We obviously can’t in any game walk out and be minus-three in the turnover margin.”

For the Tigers, who expect to contend for the SEC East title, there's nothing to do but swallow this damaging defeat and move forward.

Odom said he takes the charge personally to get MU on track.

“It’s ... realizing the reality of what took place,” Odom said late Saturday night, “and then making corrections, working and quit talking about it.

“Let’s go do it, and it starts with me.”

Their hopes for this season shaken to the core, the Tigers’ chief concern now is more than just the NCAA overturning their bowl ban but rather positioning themselves to be eligible for such a game if the sanctions are to be lifted.

What do you do when you look in the mirror and what you see isn’t pretty?

“It’s a reality check, it’s a wake-up call, it’s all that," Garrett said. "You can have all the preseason hype you want about how good you’re supposed to be, but at the end of the day you’ve got to go line up, you’ve got to go play and you’ve got to get wins on the field. That starts in practice and that’s going to be the biggest thing this week: How do we respond to this, how do we take the criticism and how do we move forward?”

“It’s a good gut check for us," Bryant echoed, "and we’re going to see what type of team we have.”

kgraeler@columbiatribune.com

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